A high average power, OPO based system has been developed for the purpose of generating output in the 2 -5 pm mid-IR band. The system uses a cw diode arraypumped, Nd:YAG master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) as the pump source and two tandem OPOs for wavelength conversion to the mid-IR. A Type I1 degenerate KTP OPO was used to convert the pump beam to 2.13 pm and a Type I near degenerate zinc germanium phosphite (ZGP) OPO was used to generate broadband radiation in the 3.7 -4.1 and 4.4 -4.8 ym wavelength range.Pump Laser: The pump laser consists of a cw diode-array pumped MOPA. Figure 1 shows the optical layout. The master oscillator is a stable cavity laser using two small 3 x 2.4 x 55 mm Brewster angle cut zig-zag slabs. The slabs are pumped from both sides with two 12 bar arrays running at a nominal power of 10 W per bar. A BBO Q-switch is used to generate a 20 KHz pulse train with pulse durations of 38 -40 ns. The output is typically 20 W with near diffraction limited beam quality. The output from the master oscillator is magnified by a factor of 2 and amplified by a pair of amplifiers. Each amplifier uses a normal incidence zig-zag slab and is pumped from both sides by a pair of 50 bar arrays Reprinted front Advartced Solid-state Lasers, 514 1999 Techrtical Digest, a1999 Optical Society of America
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